On Earth As It Is In Heaven
by Feagalad
Summary: Once upon a time, there were three brothers. Sounds like a good story, eh? Well let me tell you...these things aren't half so glamorous or fun whenever you're the one living it. Neither is being stuck in the Cage with two Archangels at loggerheads such an epic end as the poets would have us believe. Don't believe me? Dude! I live it!


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**Disclaimer: **No I don't own _Supernatural_. How dare you insult the creators by even entertaining the thought that my creativity level is even close to on par with them?!

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_Once upon a time there were three brothers..._

Isn't that a great start to a tale: three brothers bound by blood, three brothers fated to fight, three brothers chosen by Heaven to right the wrongs of the universe?

Bull!

That may sound like a good story to you; an epic legend to read for the kiddie's bedtime...but as someone who personally lived through all of the crap such Heavenly Quests bring to the 'lucky' anointed ones, let me just advise you to take your story book and burn it. Like now!

See - perilous missions and death-or-glory stands aren't half as fun when you're the one whose guts are on the menu for the next ghoul smorgasbord, nor is it exciting to engage in a game of mental ping-pong chess with a couple of twisted angels. (Yeah...angels totally exist and they're less chubby, feathery-winged harpists and more like stubborn, smiting douchebags with a gnarly stick or two crammed up their heavenly...well...you get the point.)

I never asked for any of this. I never even knew that the supernatural existed until a couple of ugly bastards dragged me out through the vents and used me as their personal chew toy. I wasn't lying when I said it hurt like hell. They made a point of keeping me alive while they ate me. Guess once they got a taste of fresh meat a corpse just wasn't going to do it for them. I really wanted to die down there in that damn crypt. Funny how you start to see death with a new, friendly perspective whenever staying alive is just so terrible. Scratch that...I didn't want to die; I wanted not to exist so this whole waking nightmare could be over.

I never asked to be born, after all, and would it really be so horrible if I ceased to walk this earth? I mean - it wasn't like anyone would really miss me, terrible as that sounds. My friends were all sort of casual buddies, y'know? And as for my girlfriend...she'd get over it. I know how she was and she'd be fine. No one would miss me, really; I'm little more than a teensy little speck in the grand scheme of life (Which makes those feathery dorks' interference _twice _as annoying!) and I don't really matter when it all comes down to it. You say that sounds like the words of a suicidal narcissist? Well excuse me for living but it does wonders for your self-esteem and faith in the memories of mankind when you're the slightly neglected product of a one-night stand from 19 years ago and your dad barely seems to remember you are even there. It's better than deadbeat dads who never see their kids or who whale on them, I guess, but it sure ain't the 'apple pie a la mode' life either.

Not that my mom was an awful parent too or anything. I'm not trying to imply that; she did the best she could with the crummy hand we were dealt and she worked herself half to death trying to give me a good childhood (probably why she was so ecstatic when John Winchester turned up for our occasional ball game) and I loved her dearly for it. Still do, in fact, despite the fact that those damn ghouls decided to use her as an appetiser and therefore she no longer technically exists.

But I bet you're sitting there right about now and asking me what the _hell _this whole rambling mess has to do with the tale of the three brothers. Well J. K. Rowling I ain't...but I'm getting there. Slowly. Believe me - the whole problem is that I have _far _too much time on my hands right now and since my self-sacrificing IDIOT of an elder brother has abandoned me to listen to the bickering of two other brothers for all of eternity I'm going to try and make this little self-baring essay last as long as possible. Believe me, you'll be glad for all this back story once I start getting to the 'good 'stuff.

Anyway...back to the ghouls. Now that I look back on it, I have to say it was quite the unglamorous way to go. I'm quite certain that I pissed myself more than once down there in the crypt...at least until dehydration took over and I _couldn't _piss. That was worse. It was _such _a relief when I finally snuffed it and found myself being granted entrance to Heaven. Huh. Guess those prayers I used to say every year at the local VBS actually had some truth in them after all. If I had known I might have done a whole lot more praying a whole lot sooner. But then, considering the general temperament and personality of God's angels (at least the ones I've met) perhaps my lack of communication was a good thing. I certainly won't be complaining if I never have to talk to another winged annoyance again...but considering my current state of residence that's not exactly a likely thing, dammit!

Heaven was great. Not all it's chalked up to be (although personally I'm glad for the lack of white dresses and singing on clouds) but somehow that doesn't matter while you're there because it's actually your own personal utopia. Guess the reason no one ever managed to obtain it on earth and yet just kept trying again and again was because we were all secretly yearning for this place or something like that. It's like having your cake and eating it too...and I'd better stop with the metaphors and references before I piss off my cell mates again. They can get kinda touchy this time every decade and when they get touchy people start loosing their heads (me, usually) so I'd like to avoid that, if you don't mind.

Anyway. Up in Heaven I used to spend a lot of time with Mom. Well...I'm not sure if she was actually Mom's actual soul or just my memories of her as the two kinda tended to blur together, you know? There's no real sense of time in Heaven (in fact, if I remember my theology correctly, it and God live outside of time) and so you can linger on your favourite memories and moments as long as you want without anyone telling you to hurry the hell up. At least that's the way it was at first...then a balding jerk in a pinstriped suit invaded my life and everything started to go a bit wonky.

He said that I was a 'vessel of Michael' or whatever the crap that means and that I was needed for the Apocalypse that my two idiot brothers (apparently John was lying when he told us he had no other family...figures) had started. I'm a Winchester, unfortunately, and therefore my bloodline is _'pure and right and all that's needed for Michael to enter in'_ and a whole lot of other vaguely disturbing mumbo-jumbo that I have since forgotten. It all sounded rather pervy to me and so I told the old geezer where to stick it. For some reason he decided that he didn't like my tone, so after a few threats of stage bad cancer and chronic flatulence he took off with a flutter of his little feathery wings. That was when I discovered that I _really _don't like angels...even if I didn't understand just what that nasty feeling was yet.

That rat barred my visiting privileges with my mom. I mean...talk about hitting below the belt! It wasn't enough that I wasn't allowed to visit her Heaventopia, oh no, he had to hack into my head and restrict my memories as well. Starting to see why I'm not a big fan of angels? I have to admit...that's probably the one point that I agree on with my eldest brother. He thinks they're all dicks and I'm not about to argue after what they did.

So where do my two idiot brothers come in? Aside from starting the Apocalypse and all, that is? Well...turns out Zachariah was lying through his disgustingly angelic teeth. I wasn't the chosen vessel for Michael; Dean was.

Dean Harrison Winchester. What can I say about him that won't come off like an insult or gay? Uh...he has an unfairly good-looking nose, though given the condition he was in when last I saw him he might not be rocking the devil-may-care grin any more. He's the eldest brother in our little messed-up family and he's also a total arrogant, anti-social bigot. Or at least that's the impression _I _got during our brief encounters. I mean, the guy does try - I'll give him credit for that - but he's hopelessly co-dependant on Sam and, well, it was obvious from the start that there was no place for me. He's also the one that the Heavenly Hosts, in all of their wisdom and sobriety, had named as the vessel of the Archangel Michael. Not hard to see why; he's an egotistical, self-righteous Daddy's boy who always thinks (or convinces himself) that he knows what is best not only for himself but for everyone 'under' him as well. Wouldn't be half so annoying if he really was as perfect as his haircut, but he's not. Even Sam gets fed up with the contradictions of ego and self-loathing that is Dean. You'd have to be a damn saint not to! Speaking of Sam...

Samuel Henry Winchester. He's a slightly different nut than Dean...but he definitely has a few screws loose upstairs too. Guess if I was the chosen vessel for Lucifer I might go a tad crazy as well...but Sammy brings a whole new definition to the term. Word is that he actually drank demon blood as a drug for a while. It don't get much more nutty than that! What I would like to know is what the Winchester ancestors did to piss God, Satan, and the universe at large off so much. Was Eve's last name Winchester or something? Because it sometimes feels like we're still being punished for that original sin being introduced to the world...and I didn't even grow up bearing the name! If having a crap life and being bossed around by perfect big brother is what made Lucifer rebel in the first place, well I don't blame him. I had _more _than enough time to observe that kind of dynamic during my imprisonment (they probably saw it as a liberation) stint with them back during the whole Zachariah-stalking-my-ass fiasco that got me in this damned place to begin with! If you can believe Lucifer (and, trust me, I don't most 'mornings') Sam has had his fair share of Daddy issues and rebellions too. He even got kicked out of the Winchester fold and ran off to Stanford University for a while. Not exactly Hell, I grant you, but still! My family is _so _messed up...

And that brings me to myself: Adam John Milligan (or Winchester, by blood) former ghoul-bait and current cell mate of the two bitchiest archangels in the history of...well...the universe! Trust me, I know more about the politics, architecture, and personal life of Heaven than I _ever _wanted to. Sometimes that's the worst part of being stuck here in the Cage; the utter boredom. Oh the torture's no picnic either (My pain threshold must be through the roof by this point...I'd smoke Tyler in a game of Chicken any day!) but somehow the hours between the session, when Michael and Lucifer are PMSing at each other, are worse because I'm about ready to claw out my own eyeballs or peel off my fingernails - anything to distract me from the fact that I am BORED! You know how sometimes a jerk friend of yours will bring to your attention the way that your socks press against your feet or the sensation of your tongue in your mouth just to mess with your head? Yeah...now imagine that quadrupled and combined with fingernails screeching on a chalkboard stretched out into infinity. Then scrap all of those ideas because they can't even _begin _to compare to what ONE AFTERNOON in the Cage is like.

It was better when Sam was in here with me, much as I hated to see him take most of the punishments for me...self-sacrificing skyscraper of a man that he is, but he would ramble on during the 'sit and wait with baited breath for the next session' moments about painfully long word problems in calculus (and all of the grammatical errors in his Freshman textbook) or devastatingly dry legal lectures that for some reason he found stimulating or, stranger still, the subject of why salads are better for you than bacon cheeseburgers (I agree on that one...compressed pig stuff and aluminum cheese with your burger? GROSS!) and it was a perfect distraction for both of us. I mean...after about eighty years you barely notice the pain any more, just because there are no _painless _moments and so you sort of forget what you're supposed to be comparing it negatively to. That's when the psychological stuff really starts because you start to recognise the fact that you are officially crazy (unless you're a Winchester...then it happened years ago) and you start tearing yourself apart worrying about it. I'm _way _past that stage now, thanks to Sam being whisked away some century or so ago, and I'm pretty certain that Lucifer isn't the only psychopath in this place any more. How I would LOVE to get the hell out of here and start inflicting some poetic justice on a few of the world's less-deserving jerks...starting with a certain archangel duo who just won't stop their damn fighting even now.

Honestly...I'm about ready to gouge out my eardrums. They've gone round and round and round from the beginning of time right up to the New Heaven and New Earth over and over as they snipe out each other's shortcomings and, quite frankly, I'm sick of it. The only thing that stops me from jumping in the middle and screaming at them to SHUT THE HELL UP! is my own personal ego (that would be throwing a tantrum...and I'm over a hundred by now) and the shred of self-preservation I have left. They just decided to ignore me...let's not call their attention back to the human worm in the corner.

I guess that makes me the Gabriel in this whole messed up Heaven-Earth brothers parallel. I'm the little brother, the insignificant troublemaker who is forever just out of the loop and doomed to watch his elder brothers squabble and duel. Although, I'd take Sam and Dean's freakish sense of co-dependency and bizarre taste in music over Michael and Lucifer's issues any day. Maybe if I ever get out of here with my sanity intact (HA!) I'll have to go find my crazy bros and see if we can get a joint rate at a psychiatrist's. Yeah...maybe I could talk them into visiting a Taco Bell while we're at it, I've had a hankering for a double-meat n' cheese burrito for the past 70 years and I'll be damned if I let two prissy, stuck-up archangels get between me and my Mexican. Wouldn't say no to a Pepsi either, come to think of it.

Oh. Damn. Gotta go...Lucifer is threatening Michael with gastral evisceration again. _Don't _want to get caught in the crossfire of _that _one again...it can get quite messy. Besides, I'm out of wall to scratch. To the poor soul who may stumble upon this message, I apologise for any actions of my future (probably _more _insane) self may take upon our meeting. I'm not certain if I can take much more of this. Sam and Dean better get off their asses and figure out a way to get me out before I attempt a double murder of the Sword and the Morningstar...

God help me!

Adam...(oh hang it all!)...Winchester, signing off.

P.S. If I'm Gabriel does that mean I get to visit Nazareth? I've always wondered if Mary really did ride a donkey...


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